Child textile worker gets recognition

The grave of a Gaston County child laborer overlooked by history for nearly a century now has an engraved granite marker thanks to a local man with a heart for helping the community.

Wade Allen

The grave of a Gaston County child laborer overlooked by history for nearly a century now has an engraved granite marker thanks to a local man with a heart for helping the community.

Leon Wyant of Wyant and Son Monument Co. in Gastonia crafted and donated the marker to memorialize the burial site of Giles Edmund Newsom, who died in October 1918 of Spanish flu. At the time, the boy was working at Modena Cotton Mills.

Newsom, born in August 1900, was buried in an unmarked grave at Hollywood Cemetery on Broad Street in Gastonia.

In 1912 the boy fell onto a spinning machine at Sanders Cotton Manufacturing Co. in Bessemer City, and two of his fingers were torn off. Newsom was photographed by Lewis Hine as part of the National Child Labor Committee project.

Although Newsom died six years later, he became the face of a movement to reform the often wretched child labor conditions in America.

Searching for clues

For months, historians Joe Manning of Massachusetts and Alta Durden of North Augusta, S.C., have worked to find out whatever happened to Newsom, helping piece together events in the boy’s life.

Documents were uncovered, despite an incorrect name appearing on Newsom’s death certificate, and Manning began collecting facts about Newsom’s demise.

Wyant said Durden first contacted him about perhaps laying a marker at Newsom’s grave and Manning followed up on it. Wyant donated his time, material and resources to make the endeavor a reality.

He’s been in the monument business for more than 50 years and was glad to be able to help permanently recognize Newsom.

“I try to help people out. I’ve always done that,” he said. “It surprises me the number of people who are buried that no one knows anything about that has a history. It’s a shame. Every grave ought to be marked, I know I’m in the business but, to me, you’re truly dead if you have an unmarked grave.”

Graves that are commemorated with markers help keep the person’s memory alive.

“I do a lot of things for people who don’t have money. I try to work my best around it, especially something like this,” Wyant said.

Newsom’s grave marker is rather simple, nothing flashy. Etched into the granite is his name along with the years of his birth and death. Wyant had a piece of rock sitting around that served the project at hand.

The final chapter

For Manning, the installation of Newsom’s grave marker on Wednesday is a happy ending to a less-than-pleasant story that has kept him busy tracking down details for a long time.

A Gazette article in March discussed Manning’s passion for studying the stories of child laborers and his hope of finding out what happened to Newsom.

But the case of Giles Newsom is different for Manning.

“I just left like this boy needed some recognition and I just felt like he was dealt a bad hand. I felt like I needed to do more,” he said. “I just felt, well nobody else is going to do that. I at least have the powers of persuasion. I don’t know what it means to the people of Gastonia. All I know is that it means a lot to me.”

Newsom died at age 18 and was the victim of circumstance; Manning said it appears that he did not have a proper funeral.

“I’m changing the history of Gastonia a little bit because I took an active role in making this change,” he said. “It made me feel good. When you do things like this you think, ‘Oh right, it’s never going to work out.’”

But in the case of Newsom, the persistence proved worthwhile and the seemingly impossible task of uncovering decades-old documents became a reality.

Gazette reporter Wade Allen can be reached at 704-869-1828; twitter.com/gazettewade.